Qualitative interviewing: uncovering truth or constructing knowledge?

Picture Source: thought bubbles added

Transhumance in Bhutan: Interview with Kuenga Namgay

Kuenga Namgay started his PhD at CSU in 2010. Kuenga is from Bhutan, where he has worked in agricultural science in a variety of roles ranging from farm management to policy development. Kuenga has just submitted his thesis and has provided a few thoughts on his PhD experience.

Confronting the social media revolution: Marketing knowledge and image

Effective communication of science and research, as well as building and maintaining a professional profile, has challenged academics, researchers and their institutions in highly competitive fields for decades. Social media is branded as a way to overcome this and many are adopting into the dominant paradigm. Social media was the feature of the concluding presentation at the recent CSU Institute for Land, Water & Society (ILWS) forum in early July at Thurgoona, with a ‘Speed date’ provided via this YouTube Clip.

Getting wires uncrossed

Imagine this. An agricultural scientist in Australia wants to start a research project on parasitic worms in goats in Laos, South East Asia. Goats are new livestock to Laos, and he needs a local collaborator to help with the research.

He writes an email in English to three Lao livestock researchers he has found on the Internet, outlining the project and inviting them to take part.

The Lao scientists open the email and say ‘who is this Australian? Do I know him? How did he get my name? Why should I talk to him?’ After talking together on their mobiles about this silly falang, they press ‘delete’.

The Australian scientist waits for two weeks for replies, but gets none. He gets mad, then disappointed, and then he asks himself ‘what did I do wrong?’

What stopped this project? Was it poor communication?

Welcome

Last week, most of the Environmental Science research students attended the CSU Faculty of Science Symposium held at the Wagga Wagga campus. The annual Symposium is a great excuse for us to escape our computer screens for a couple of days and reconnect with students and colleagues based at other campuses or locations…or even from the office next door! Most importantly, it gave us all an opportunity to put our research into perspective, and consider how our project is relevant or interesting to others.